On Friday the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to block Georgia’s pre-viability abortion ban that is set to take effect January 1, 2013.

The suit, filed on behalf of three obstetricians in the state whose patients are in need of medical treatment contends that the law, which criminalizes nearly all abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy and contains only narrow exceptions for specific threats to the mothers health, will force a physician caring for a woman with a high-risk pregnancy to wait for her condition to deteriorate to the point she is in a medical emergency before they could offer abortion care to protect her health.

“Politicians should have no say in a woman’s most private medical decisions,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project in a statement. “A woman should have the peace of mind of knowing that no matter what unanticipated problems arise during pregnancy, she’ll be able to make the best decision for herself and her family.”

Unlike some other recent legal challenges to abortion restrictions, this lawsuit was brought in state rather than federal court. That’s because in some instances state Constitutions offer more explicit privacy protections than federal law and because federal courts seem increasingly willing to regulate abortion rights out of existence. It remains to be seen if that is the case in Georgia.

Many of the anti-choice movement’s arguments revolve around the idea that a politician should have more say when it comes to carrying a pregnancy to term than a woman and her physician. Now, a group of Iowa advocates would like to see doctors’ medical input thrown out all together.

A letter in the Iowa Times-Republican titled “Iowa’s abortion laws too relaxed” offers a laundry list of concerns that it is too easy to terminate a pregnancy in the state, including through tele-med abortions and because of the ability of teens to seek judicial waivers if a parental consent is not in her best interest. However, one issue the group has with the laws is downright alarming. “A doctor can interpret if an abortion is necessary for a woman’s health,” bemoan the writers.

And that is bad? Of course doctors would be the ones who say if a woman has a health issue. Who else should be allowed to make that decision, legislators?

Perhaps so. The letter then provides a list of candidates to vote for to remedy these “lax” restrictions.

Who do you want making the final decision on your health—your doctor, or politicians and priests?

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/10/31/iowa-antis-want-stricter-abortion-restrictions-because-doctors-are-dictating-wome/feed/3Nebraska Lawmakers, Seeking to Restrict Abortion Care, Ignore Science, Evidence, and Pleas of Parentshttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/04/02/nebraska-legislature-seeks-restrict-abortion-care-based-faulty-science/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nebraska-legislature-seeks-restrict-abortion-care-based-faulty-science
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/04/02/nebraska-legislature-seeks-restrict-abortion-care-based-faulty-science/#commentsFri, 02 Apr 2010 11:35:00 +0000The "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act" still requires two more rounds of debate within the next two weeks before it is sent to the governor, who is expected to sign it into law.

]]>It is by no means the first attempt to use faulty “scientific data” declaring that fetuses can feel pain in order to implement more restrictions on a woman’s right to choose. But one thing that became clear as the Nebraska legislature conducted the first of three scheduled debates on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act:” It is the intent of the bill’s sponsors to have it immediately challenged and brought before the Supreme Court as a chance to strike a blow against Roe V. Wade.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Mike Flood and 22 others, attempts to use widely contested claims that a fetus has teh ability to feel “intense pain” (a phrase used repeatedly during the debate) as early as 20 weeks post-fertilization. Opposing the bill was Democratic Sen. Danielle Conrad, who in her opening remarks brought to the legislature’s attention the dubious science being relied on as “fact,” as well as the lack of credentials held by the “unbiased expert witnesses” invited by Flood. These “experts” included Theresa Collett,the St. Thomas law professor who is a key member of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and also a Republican congressional candidate.

Supporters of the bill relied on a litany of anti-choice rhetoric, with some senators apologizing they could not eliminate abortion altogether but praising the bill as an excellent “first step,” to a declaration by one senator that people on both sides need to stop using the “F word” (i.e. fetus) because it was “offensive and demeaning.” “He/she is an unborn child. He is someone’s son. She is someone’s daughter. He is someone’s grandson. She is someone’s granddaughter.”

No female legislators stood in support of the bill.

The debate, rather than attempting to sway legislators from voting to pass the bill, instead focused on amendments to the bill that would allow maternal physical health exemptions and mental health exemptions to the ban. As currently written, the only exemption to the ban is for the mother to be near death or irreversible physical harm, creating the most restrictive ban ever passed. Mental health exemptions are often used in the case of women who discover after the 20th week that their child has an irreparable fetal anomaly that would endanger the pregnancy or cause great pain to the fetus if brought to term.

When presented with a chance to address such an exemption, Sen. Flood instead insisted that these cases of allowing abortion for “disabled” children should not be allowed.

Flood said he knew there was no more divisive issue than abortion. And it was particularly hard during the hearing on the bill to listen to situations of couples faced with advanced pregnancies in which unborn children had potentially fatal conditions. He didn’t want to hurt people with his bill, he said.

“But I also ask the question, why does a baby that’s going to be born with a disability become a better candidate for an abortion? Does their disability make them less human? Are they less deserving of the state’s protection?” he said.

Nebraska resident Tiffany Campbell, who testified before the committee previously that such a ban would have killed both of the fetuses she was carrying when she discovered she had a rare condition known as “twin to twin transfusion syndrome,” rather than losing just one to an abortion, responded to Flood.

“Speaker Flood referred to fatal fetal anomalies as ‘disabilities’ in the debate. Brendan, the baby my husband Chris and I aborted, didn’t have a ‘disability.’ He was on the verge of death himself and about to take Brady, who is now 3 years old, with him. We had the choice of saving one baby or burying two. That’s not a ‘disability.’

Speaker Flood, who introduced LB 1103, came up after my testimony and said he’d never heard of a case like mine. So now he’s amended the bill with what sounds like it might be a possible exception for women with conditions like mine (Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome). But what about all of the other cases that Flood and his colleagues have never heard of? The legislators trying to pass this bill clearly don’t understand the range of issues parents can face during a pregnancy. They’re still trying to strip parents of our right to make these difficult personal medical decisions. We’re the ones who should be making private healthcare decisions for our babies and families.

The lack of a mental health exemption became an extensive issue for Sen. Barbara Council, especially considering the body had voted earlier to pass a new law stating that women must have a mental evaluation before having an abortion, and that a doctor has the right to overrule her request if he deems she is not mentally or emotionally capable of handling the procedure. “Women who seek abortions after the 20th week are predominately women who wanted their pregnancies,” Council reminded the legislature. She then noted the inconsistency of senators ruling in one bill that the doctor was the ultimate authority on when a woman can have an abortion, then rule in another bill that the doctor’s opinion of a women’s mental health is superseded by that of the legislature.

“I’m disturbed about the absolute blatant disregard of this legislature for the health and wellbeing of the mother,” stated Council.

By the close of the debate the bill passed 38-5 and only one amendment was added: a moratorium on enacting the legislation until October of 2010, in order to provide both sides time to prepare for the court battle that will take place. Bill proponents call it a “landmark” piece of legislation meant for the Supreme Court, and do not even pretend to believe in its constitutionality. “As one senator stated, it may not be deemed constitutional but it’s never wrong doing the right thing,” [Sen. Ken] Schilz said. “I cannot agree more.” Opponents agree that the bill will end up in the courts but that other states’ attempts to roll back abortion to any time before viability have ultimately failed.

The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” still requires two more rounds of debate within the next two weeks before it is sent to the governor, who is expected to sign it into law.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/04/02/nebraska-legislature-seeks-restrict-abortion-care-based-faulty-science/feed/3How the Midwest Was Won: South Dakota Healthy Families’ Winning Messagehttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2008/12/09/how-midwest-was-won-south-dakota-healthy-families-winning-message/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-midwest-was-won-south-dakota-healthy-families-winning-message
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2008/12/09/how-midwest-was-won-south-dakota-healthy-families-winning-message/#commentsTue, 09 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0000The South Dakota measure to criminalize abortion was defeated by 10 points. The campaign responsible for challenging the ban used messaging much of the national pro-choice movement might not agree with. How does a state in which most voters identify as pro-life defeat an abortion ban?

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This fall, amid furor over the election of Barack Obama to
the presidency and Democrats’ widened majority in Congress, three states
quietly defeated anti-choice ballot measures, California,
Colorado, and South Dakota.

Of these, perhaps South
Dakota is the most perplexing. South Dakota is a state with a small
population and very few cities. Although the state hasn’t been polled on
abortion except for how they might vote on the 2004 and 2008 abortion ban measures,
even pro-choice advocates in the state readily admit that the majority of the
state would self-identify as pro-life. John McCain and Sarah Palin easily won
the state this fall, and an abortion ban with no exceptions passed with vast
majority in both houses of the state legislature and was signed into law by Gov.
Mike Rounds more than two years ago. To the surprise of the pro-choice movement,
the state overturned the ban in a November 2006 referendum by a wide margin.
Exit polls suggested that many voters were uncomfortable with the lack of
exceptions for a woman’s health and life written into the ban. A poll by the
Argus Leader, South Dakota’s largest newspaper, run shortly after the 2006
abortion ban defeat, showed that a vast majority — by a 28-point margin — would
support a ban with exceptions.

So the pro-life movement in South Dakota gave it another shot. They put
an abortion ban with vague exceptions on the ballot this fall and looked forward to
seeing it sail to victory. Less than a month before the election, a poll showed
voters split evenly on the measure, 44-44 percent, and 12 percent were still
undecided. On Election Day, the measure was defeated by 10 points, 54 to 44
percent. So how does a state, in which most voters would probably still identify as pro-life, manage to
defeat abortion bans twice?

This was a question recently
explored in an article by Denise Ross in The New Republic. Ross concludes that "revisiting the debate over four years and consumed by it
throughout 2006, [the state’s electorate] has just gotten so educated on the
issue that they are now uncomfortable with black-and-white formulations that
bans contain." Indeed, the region’s Planned Parenthood and
the pro-choice coalition South Dakota Healthy Families used language
and messaging very different from national pro-choice groups.

Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, South Dakota, and North
Dakota, credits the win to a well-run campaign with
broad grassroots support. But it wasn’t a strategy run only by outside
consultants, with slick advertisements and catch phrases like "My Body, My
Choice" or "Keep
Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries." In fact, the word "choice" was abandoned by
the coalition fighting the abortion ban in South Dakota altogether. Instead, the
coalition took a
pro-family approach, using the word "baby" where mainstream pro-choice groups
would have used the word "fetus." One Healthy Families ad featured a woman
named Tiffany Campbell, who appeared with her husband and son. In the television ad, Campbell explained
that during her pregnancy they discovered twin-to-twin syndrome, a condition in which one fetus would need to be terminated for the other to survive. Campbell
phrased it this way, "I would have buried two babies." Much of the language in
the ads talked about families making decisions without government interference.

"We were completely ready to and did redraft all of the
usual rhetoric that is used by people on our side," Stoesz said. She noted a
lot of feminists on the national level were upset at a pro-choice campaign that would abandon rhetoric built on for decades, but Stoesz isn’t sorry she
abandoned the rhetoric. "As the head of Planned Parenthood [in the region] I’m
responsible for keeping the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota open and I’m
responsible for making sure there is a strong base of support for women’s
reproductive health in South Dakota," she said. "South
Dakota isn’t Manhattan.
It isn’t San Francisco.
It isn’t even Chicago and it’s not even Minneapolis. It’s so
different. The culture is so different."

The coalition looked to open up a discussion and stay away
from polarizing debates. They wanted to humanize abortion in a way that had
rarely been seen in a campaign. Stoesz talked about how during the campaign in
2006, many national feminist groups criticized their messaging for saying that the ban went "too far" because it did not contain exceptions,
implying that a ban with exceptions would be acceptable. "That made people very
uncomfortable. But we had to start there," Stoesz said. Instead of casting
actors in their ads, they used real South
Dakota women who were willing to share their stories.
"This had started in 2006 spontaneously on its own," Stoesz said. "People began
telling their stories about abortion to one another in South Dakota in a way that doesn’t happen in
any other place in the country. I’m just not aware of any other community, certainly not state, that has engaged in a lengthy and meaningful discussion
about abortion. But that [has] happened in South Dakota now for over two years."

The campaign tapped local women like Campbell to appear in their ads and tried to
get those that might otherwise identify as pro-life to talk with women in their
communities about abortion. Stoesz found that people who were morally opposed
to abortion found that "women and families who choose to have abortions are not
that different from themselves."

Stoesz thinks this is a sign that the pro-choice movement
needs to put aside some of the choice-based language it has been using for
years. "This proves conclusively that it’s time to give up the old rhetoric and
use language that is empathic and that people relate to," she said. "People
don’t like to be bullied. There’s a large portion of people who are morally
uncomfortable with abortion but don’t want to ban it."

Nathan Peterson, director of the South Dakota Healthy
Families campaign since 2006 and lifelong South Dakota
resident, noted that South Dakota,
like many other conservative states with large rural areas, might not fall
neatly along party lines.

"There are certainly large numbers of Democrats in South Dakota that voted
in favor of the abortion ban and, in a similar fashion, large numbers of
Republicans that voted against it. It’s not necessarily tied to a political
party in South Dakota,"
Peterson said. Volunteers who canvassed in the state didn’t simply find that
people were pro- or anti-choice. "When we were training our volunteers and when we
were training our staff we knew that we could knock on five different doors and
find five different points of view on this issue. It wasn’t going to serve us
well to take one particular stance on abortion and try to convince those five
people that they should think the exact same way," he said.

Of course, it helped the campaign that the legislation was
badly written and raised a lot of questions about exactly how much access the
government would get to medical records. Peterson found that it was especially
helpful to focus on these concrete consequences of the legislation.
"The 2008 law in particular, we talked about how section 18 of [the proposed
abortion ban] would have forced doctors to turn over their patients’ complete
medical records to the state department of health," Peterson said. "It would
essentially give the government access to our personal medical information. We
were able to make much more progress in convincing people that, whatever personal
opinion on abortion might be, trying to pass this kind of legislation would
have disastrous consequences." Eventually, by raising the question of state
interference and by offering stories of real women who talked about their decisions,
the campaign seemed to prove to voters that no "health exception" would be sufficient to protect women’s health.

The campaign found support in surprising areas of the state.
"Many would consider the Western portion of South Dakota more conservative. In the Western
half of the state Republicans enjoy a larger registration advantage, for
example," Peterson explained. "[But] We had much more support in the Western
part of the state than in the Eastern part of the state and I think that’s
because some of that libertarian mindset. Whatever an individual’s personal
opinion may be [on abortion] it starts a very bad precedent to start letting
government dictate what medical decisions people can and can’t make."

For now, Healthy Families has committed to staying organized
in the state since supporters of the abortion ban have made statements that
they might try again. The Vote Yes For Life website says, "We shall rise and
fight again." But people in South
Dakota, now after more than four years of intense
discussion and debate over abortion seem tired of it. "Everyone in the
state now wants to work toward reducing unintended pregnancies and improving
education," Peterson said. "They would rather reduce incidences of unintended
pregnancy than rehash the same divisive debate."

Abortion will remain legal in South Dakota. Stoesz and the Healthy
Families coalition were successful in defeating a ban that positioned itself as
a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
Perhaps now, instead of rerunning the same old abortion debate, the debate
about comprehensive sex education and increased family planning can begin.

Don’t forget to join Kay Steiger and
others on RH Reality Check, for a live discussion on the future of
reproductive health and rights. Join us and ask your questions!